If Tomorrow
by Kitten Kisses
Summary: But Remus is not like most people, he's seen more, felt more, experienced more—and he's certainly done a hell of a lot more hurting. It's no wonder he doesn't want to hear something stupid like, "I love you, you know?" come out of her mouth. Complete.
1. Part I

**Title: **If Tomorrow**  
>Characters: <strong>Remus, Tonks**  
>Genre:<strong> Angst, Romance**  
>Words: <strong>1415 (Part 1/3), 2878 (Part 2/3), 1316 (Part 3/3)**  
>Notes:<strong> This has probably been done and redone over and over again, but I guess I see their 'breakup' before the sixth book a little different. Three parts already completed—the other two will be posted soon. This is dedicated to my buddy Kittykatloren, for listening to my babble.

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><p><em>So tell that someone that you love<em>  
><em>Just what you're thinking of<em>  
><em>If tomorrow never comes<em>  
>If Tomorrow Never Comes—Garth Brooks<p>

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><p>She knows she's said something wrong by the look on his face. Nymphadora Tonks has spent the greater part of recent months getting to know Remus Lupin, and she takes great pride in her small victories that consist solely of figuring out his true feelings versus what he chooses to let people think.<p>

And the way his forehead is crinkled, the way his eyes slant, the way his lips curl downward in a barely-concealed grimace…

Well, she knows she's ruined it all, everything, and all because of that one word she probably shouldn't have said.

_It's true, I meant it,_ she thinks as she begins cursing herself, starting with, _You bloody fool! What were you thinking?_

It's now, standing in front of him outside the door to her flat, that she realizes something important.

She doesn't know Remus J. Lupin at all.

Not really. Oh, sure, she knows him about as well as she's ever known anyone, maybe better, but he's not like most people, he's seen more, felt more, experienced more—and he's certainly done a hell of a lot more hurting, too.

And here she is, still young, inexperienced really, and the saddest thing she's ever had to deal with has been Sirius's death. (Sirius's death, which she wasn't even awake to see, which she still partially blames herself for, which never had to happen, really, and wouldn't have, if only she hadn't been so stupid, so clumsy, so _incapable_.)

It's no wonder he doesn't want to hear something stupid like, _"I love you, you know?"_ come out of her mouth.

But it's too late; she can't take it back, not now, not when she said it with such _feeling_ because she's never meant anything more in her entire life, not when he's already heard it, not when he's looking at her as if she's kicked him in the stomach.

A part of her is already fleeing in terror, because she's never taken rejection well, it hurts a little more every time it happens, and come on, why can't she ever pick someone who likes her just as she is, someone whose _like_ extends to _love_ instead of, "Oh Tonks, you're just a _friend_," or, "Just like one of the boys!" because those things aren't comforting, aren't any less hurtful than, "I don't care about you that way," or, "Sure, if you'll change _XYZ_ for me."

She's heard it all.

Or, she thinks she has.

"I can't," he tells her, and her mind is working frantically, trying to decide what is coming next, coming after those words, those two words that have started out sounding not-too-bad (for an impending rejection) but always end in some kind of awful lie, some kind of excuse, any excuse not to date her, because she's just so un-dateable or something she never quite understood.

But more words don't come, and she finds her temper overriding her abject fear of rejection from the one man who's seen her at her best and at her worst, looking quite natural and normal, with the body she was born with, including the hair, and didn't ask her to change a thing just so she'd be more pleasant to look at.

"You _can't_?" she finds herself saying, angry and incredulous and everything in between. What does that even mean, _I can't_, she wonders, can't what, can't date, can't date _me_?

He nearly flinches under her steady gaze, but nods, briefly, and she thinks she's never seen him look so cowardly before, so unable to face something.

"Why?" she asks flatly, because her temper's petered out and she's tired from working so much overtime, from working for the Order, from cooking and cleaning and making some kind of effort to remain a normal member of the wizarding world with a semi-clean flat and clean clothes.

"I just can't," is his only answer, and he doesn't look away when he says it. His jaw is set, but his eyes…they're different.

"Are you scared?" she finds herself asking before she can stop herself, before she realizes that it's probably not the right thing to say, not now, maybe not ever.

He doesn't want to answer, that much is obvious. He doesn't physically look away, but she knows he's kilometers away in his head, wandering off to think about it, to think of an appropriate answer to her question, one that won't—won't what? Won't hurt as much? Won't sound so ridiculous?

"Terrified," he says, truthfully; she knows because his eyes are very clear and he does not blink, but the most telling sign is the fact that he says it so simply, so sincerely, without even the slightest drop of sarcasm or humour in his voice.

"Of love?" she asks, and when he doesn't move to answer, she says, her voice barely a squeaking whisper, "Of me?"

His voice is hollow and tired when he finally dares to speak, "Both."

"For God's sake, Remus," she hisses, and she knows her face is scrunched up in a hideous combination of sorrow and hurt and anger, but she doesn't care, "you transform into a bloody werewolf every full moon, and you're afraid o—"

Her words stop abruptly at the look in his eyes. _I don't want to talk about this,_ is what they're saying to her. _Please don't make me talk about this_._ I don't want to, I don't want to, please, please, please don't make me._

But she wants to make him talk about it, wants that more than anything. Love isn't so bad, not really, not if you feel it for another person, not if they reciprocate. It's Remus she's talking to, though, and she thinks that for all his talk about being old, he's really just a scared little boy deep down, afraid of trusting again lest it hurt him, afraid of loving again, lest it hurt him—he's just afraid of being hurt, she thinks, and she can't blame him, not really, because if she were in his shoes, she might be just as likely to be afraid, too.

"If you don't love me, Remus, you can just say so." She looks down at her boots and gives what she hopes is a casual shrug. "It's nothing I haven't heard before."

Maybe she's fishing for a compliment, maybe she's giving him an easy way out, or maybe she's just hoping that he'll just _say it, _one way or another, because it's easier to get over someone if they just don't love you back, and if there's hope, well, she'll hold onto it, because what she's been feeling for ages isn't some passing sort of fancy with a bloke who's easy on the eyes and charming in personality.

This is Remus. And she loves him.

No, he's not particularly handsome, and he comes in a package of flaws, physical and mental. But isn't that what true love is supposed to be? That stupid "love is blind" nonsense that so many Muggles believe in is rubbish, because she knows most of his faults and they're just not bad enough to make her give up on him.

She's not blind at all. What she's seeing when she looks at him is exactly what she wants—right down to his mustache and his scars and the fact that he fears being hurt just as much, if not more than, the next person.

"It's not that," he tells her, and she's so startled by his words after the long silence that she almost jumps out of her own skin, though she manages to control her reaction to a sharp upward jerk of her head.

So there's an actual reason he can't, she thinks to herself, but then she realizes she doesn't know what he meant by _can't_, not really—can't love her, can't reciprocate her feelings, can't tell her he loves her, can't…? Can't _what?_

"Then what is it?" she asks, feeling a headache coming on from far too many hours spent on duty and far too few asleep. But this is important, and she determines that she _will_ find out what it is that he feels, one way or another, because she can't stand the unknown, she finds it frighteningly uncertain, ungrounded, and despite her crazy hair and her confidence, she needs stability, especially now, and not knowing will upset the careful balance she's tried to create, will topple her far faster than the old umbrella stand at 12 Grimmauld Place.

She waits for his answer.


	2. Part II

**Title: **If Tomorrow (Part II of III)**  
>Characters: <strong>Remus, Tonks**  
>Genre: <strong>Angst, Romance, Introspection**  
>Words: <strong>3,000 exactly after editing.**  
>Notes:<strong> This is continuing off from the end of the last chapter, but we're seeing things from Remus's side. Now, a quick random note: I never really thought that Remus's biggest issue with Tonks was that he was afraid she was going to change her mind and leave him—though that could have been something at play in the grand scheme of things. Rather, I always felt that he thought—was _thoroughly convinced_—that he was doing the right thing by not letting himself have her. (More notes at my LJ/DW fic communities.)

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><p>Never in a million years did he think that she would say it, not so soon, not right now, and certainly not with <em>such feeling<em>. Remus J. Lupin has always prided himself on being able to remain calm under pressure; he always managed to be the voice of reason when things went to hell in a handbasket; when Sirius fell through the Veil, there hadn't been time to think, only to act, and Sirius was dead and so very irrelevant compared to the very real fear that Harry would rush in after him, and Tonks was lying on the cold ground looking near death, and the others were fighting for their lives with everything they had.

They're _still_ fighting. Except for Sirius, and for Emmeline, and James and Lily, who are all dead now, unable to have even the _chance_ to fight—for anything, for their lives, for their freedom, for their children and friends and family.

Such measured calm. People have always told him that's what they noticed most about him.

But now, standing outside the door to Tonks's flat, he wonders if he can manage to grasp any of that again. He finds that remaining calm in the wake of a romantic confession is not easy, perhaps made more difficult because of who it is.

It's not as if he's never heard a confession before. Girls approached him now and again at Hogwarts, and some afterward, but he learned quickly to keep them all at arm's length, to not let them know him very well, not well enough to assume they knew what he was thinking, anyway.

He supposes that he's known all along that Tonks felt _something_ for him, and looking back, he really ought to have seen this coming. But he hadn't, and that is his own fault.

It's not that he doesn't love her, because he does. He shouldn't, but he does. So many things he's done and said and thought that he shouldn't. But bygones are bygones, and Remus is not the sort of man to dwell overmuch on _what could have been_, because he learned years and years ago that such things never helped, never erased embarrassment or hurt, never brought back the dead, or even friends lost to the darkness inside.

"I just _can't_," he says in reply to her question, and he cringes as he says it, because he knows it's hurtful, it's awful, but it's not a lie, it's the truth, and Remus likes the truth most of the time, because it's safe and honest and good.

Her eyebrows narrow as she stares at him, and her lips twist into a frown. "That's the shittiest excuse I've ever heard," she says.

He wants to argue with her, tell her it's not an excuse, it's real, it's as real as the looming war is, as real as the threat of Voldemort, as real as the restrictions placed upon people like him, people who bear the curse of the werewolf.

He does love her, probably more than he's let himself love anyone.

But he can't.

"Tonks," he tries, tiredly, and it hurts him to hurt her _because_ he loves her, and he really just wishes she could understand, could see more into his psyche than he's ever allowed anyone to see, if only so that she can understand him as well as he understands himself. He wonders if that would be enough.

"Just say it, Remus," she says, and she sounds so downtrodden and heartbroken and _tired_ that he feels shame cold and deep in his own weary bones. It's like she's waiting for the The End, and he's about to deliver that to her, not by way of the _Avada Kedavra_, but instead through rejection.

This isn't like any rejection he's had to give, before.

Before, the girls had never known him.

Before, he'd only felt a passing affection for them, sometimes just teenage hormonal lust.

Before, he never let himself care so much about a woman, because he knew that _their_ rejection would be imminent, and wouldn't it be better for _him_ to end it first, before _they_ could hurt him?

But now, he finds it a difficult thing to say, to tell her no, because walking away is the last thing he really wants to do. It would be selfish of him to let himself have her, and he doesn't think she understands his way of thinking, his point of view.

"I'm too old," he tries, and he knows it's true.

"That is the biggest crock of shit I've ever heard," she says. "I've been asked out by plenty of blokes _older_ than you. I—"

But he tunes her out because she doesn't understand, and he knows she won't even if he explains it. He doesn't think he has the energy to argue with her, not now, not today.

"Age is not merely a number," he tells her softly, and his patented measured calm silences her myriad of reasons why he is not too old for her.

She does not seem to have an answer for this, and he sighs. Deep down, he wants her to refute all of his excuses, to knock down all of his walls with a shout like the one that took down the walls of the city of Jericho.

But the only defense she can seem to muster is a breath of air against his cheek, and an equally soft, "But not _too_ old."

_Just old_, he thinks, and wants to smile at it, because he does find it a little bit funny, humour to go along with the bit of a pang in his chest because she admits he is old, as if he could ever think anything else, himself, when he passes by a mirror and sees the lines etching deeper in his face, more grey in his hair, every day without fail.

"Is that it?"

"I'm too poor," he tells her next, and this one has worked numerous times over with other girls, so he thinks it's a safe second choice.

"I don't care about that stuff," she says.

But she doesn't know what she's talking about, and he wonders if maybe he doesn't really know her as well as he thinks he does.

"You will," he is certain to tell her, his voice sharp, unintentionally so.

She looks hurt, and he wishes he could take it back. "I won't."

And for a moment, he considers answering that with another retort, but he knows she'll say she doesn't care, none of it matters, it's okay, she makes decent money already and doesn't need help. It's not his manly pride that stings, it's the fact that he's always been at the bottom of the barrel, never any better, scraping in the silt for work, and getting only positions that nobody else will take; there have been very few exceptions, and even those did not last long.

He will always be poor, and pathetic, and old, and the type of man a parent would weep to see their beautiful little girl spending her days and nights with, ruining her life, wasting her potential.

"Too dangerous," he tries.

"I've always known about that," she tells him frankly, "and I never gave a damn before."

"Tonks."

She looks at him expectantly, almost as if she thinks he'll confess his undying love to her right now, because she has successfully routed his meager pile of excuses.

"Please, just listen," he says, and she nods in agreement. He can't help the sigh of relief that escapes him; he hadn't thought he could fumble through his explanation with her attempting to refute him at every turn, but now he can say it all and get it over with. "A werewolf—no, I know what you want to say, and you're wrong. I am a werewolf, even if I am also Remus. There is no getting around it, or forgetting it, or shoving it aside as if it doesn't matter, because it _does_, and you and I both know that."

Her jaw snaps shut and she clenches it, staring at him.

"A werewolf is dangerous all the time, and for a million reasons. It doesn't take the effect of a full moon."

She seems to think about it for a moment, but she answers quickly, her voice earnest. "I still don't care about those things, Remus."

"But you _should_!" he finds himself croaking in a half-shout. "You _should_ care!"

_What's the matter with you? _he thinks, and shakes his head as he takes a step backward, away from her. She should care. She should. Because all Remus J. Lupin has ever been good for was playing the role of listener, the quiet sort of problem-solver, the guy who lets you rant about your awful day at work and nods at all the right times and gets angry on your behalf for the bad things that happen.

He's the man you offer a bit of money to do odd jobs around your yard or house, to tutor your kids, because he is to be pitied, not because he's especially skilled at any of those things, but because you feel sorry for him, sorry that he can't find anything better, anything lasting, sorry that he'll never have a wife, or kids, or even his own house.

As much as he wishes to be selfish, just this once, finally, selfish enough to take what he wants because she's trying to hard to make him see things her way, he can't do it. He can't take all the good things she has away from her.

Parents who love her.

Friends.

A great job that she _loves_ despite its pitfalls.

He thinks it would hurt him more to be selfish and see her lose all those things—the love of her family and friends, her job and the respect it affords her, her dignity…

_If you are with me,_ he thinks fervently, hoping she can understand, hoping that somehow she can read his thoughts_, I will ruin you._

And maybe it's half in his head, and maybe it's not. It's hard to say, sometimes, because when it comes to Tonks, he feels a shower of things all at once, and some of them clash and conflict, while others flow together so smoothly he has wondered more than once if there _is_ something there, between them.

"Please understand," he nearly begs. "I just can't."

She looks ready to argue, her mouth opening in what he knows will be a torrential rainfall of _why why why_, and he can't help but cringe a bit at the thought, because he hasn't brought an umbrella with him, and he doesn't think he can stand to drown in her wonderings, not now.

But she closes her mouth with a soft _click_ of her teeth and looks him in the eye. "Okay, Remus," she says, softly, gently, as if she's afraid of breaking him.

Maybe he really doesn't know her as well as he thought he did, because Tonks, giving up? A part of him weeps at the thought, at the fact that she is giving up on him, because he wants so badly for her _not_ to give up; he wants this, wants it more than anything, but he can't find a way to see it that doesn't make him feel like a selfish prat, that doesn't remind him every day that she's too good for him in every sense of the word, and he wonders for another moment what it is she sees in a creaky-boned destitute man like himself.

What could he _possibly_ offer her?

"I'm not taking it back, though," she tells him, and he blinks confusedly until she clarifies. "What I said. I'm not taking it back. I meant it. I do love you."

And he wants to ask _why_ because it's not fair that _she_ can ask and he can't, but he doesn't dare, because her reasoning might melt both his heart and his resolve (in that order), and he can't deal with the consequences of that, not right now.

"I never said I wanted you to," he says.

And then there is an awkward silence that he fears will now fall between them every time they're in a room together, or just near one another, because her casual, _I love you, you know?_ has tipped the balance they've always had between them, has altered their perception of everything, leaving them to measure their words carefully before they throw them into the mixture of conversation.

"Well, good night," she tells him, and when he mumbles a reply in return, she disappears into her flat, forgoing their traditional casual goodbye hug. He finds that he misses it.

He's kilometers away, walking to clear his head, when a thought strikes him. Dumbledore has asked him to go away for a while, and he knows that Tonks knows about it.

And he worries, for a moment, that she will think he doesn't love her at all, not even a whit, but that's just not the truth, and he hates the thought of her going months and months without actually _knowing._

He knows he might die on this mission. He will go to infiltrate Greyback's pack, and he might never return.

Death is not a frightening thing for Remus, not personally. There have been many times he welcomed Death, but Death never saw fit to visit him, to take him away, to relieve him of his burdens and his sorrow and the pain of living.

The worst part about death, he thinks, is dying without the people you love knowing that you ever loved them. He is still afraid that James and Lily and Sirius had never _really_ known.

(And Peter, maybe he hadn't known, either, all those years ago. If he had, would he have still betrayed them?)

His shoes squeak as he stops in his tracks.

Does she know that he loves her? Does she have _any idea_? Or does she think that he has no real interest in her at all, no interest in _anyone_?

Maybe she knows he fancies her, maybe she knows he's thought about her a lot, and not always in an old-fashioned gentlemanly way, but does she know, does she _understand_, that there is more there than that, that his feelings extend far deeper than the leaves of the tree, but rather, into the roots.

And he thinks, if he dies right now, that will be his biggest regret, never telling her.

Knowing this is the most selfish thing he has ever done in his life, he turns on the spot and disapparates, stumbling up to the door of her flat just as soon as he appears nearby. He's only knocked once before it opens, and there she is, eyes a bit puffy and looking surprised.

_Selfish, selfish, selfish_, his mind tells him, and he knows he's being a horrible prat, but there is a good chance he won't come back from his next mission, and she _should_ know, because you should _always_ tell someone when you love them, or so Sirius said to him once, though he doubts Sirius ever followed through on that, himself.

"Nymphadora," he starts, but stops himself. "Tonks, I…"

And before he can stop himself, he's leaning down to kiss her. He's too out of sorts to think to do anything but move his lips over hers, as gently as he is able, attempting to put all his feelings into that one kiss, because he knows it will be the first and the last, and it must be worth it.

When he breaks away, he's half out of breath, and he touches her cheek as she stumbles over her threshold toward him.

"Remus," she starts to say, but he shakes his head to cut her off, because the hope in her eyes burns him to his very soul. Never has he felt such pain.

He foregoes the compliments that might offend her, might draw attention to things like their age difference or their unique problems, and instead, he goes for complete honesty: "You are beautiful," he starts, and rushes onward before he loses his nerve, "and strong-willed, and brave, and hardworking, and I admire those things about you. Even your clumsiness is endearing. But I…"

He can see the hope fading from her eyes, and half out of a desire to hold her, and half out of a desire to hide her face from him and his from hers, he pulls her in for a hug, and kisses the top of her pink-today hair.

"But I can't," he says, and the regret in his voice is almost enough to overwhelm him. He knows what it's like, now, to kiss her, to hold her, to realize that there _can_ be more, if only he'll let it happen, but he pushes all of those things away and focuses on why he's doing this.

She squeezes him.

"I love you," he whispers into her hair, "but I can't."

Can't let anything happen, he thinks, can't let us be together, can't delude myself into thinking that loving you and being with you and holding you and kissing you and sleeping with you is a good idea, is safe, isn't going to hurt anybody, because it will, it'll hurt, it'll hurt a lot, and it'll hurt us both, especially you, and I never could stand to see you hurting.

But he can't say any of that aloud, and so he runs his hands through her hair before pulling out of the hug and touching her cheek.

"Goodbye, Tonks," he tells her softly.

"Nymphadora," she corrects with a tiny smile. "Just this once."

"Nymphadora," he amends.

And he steps away before turning on the spot to get away, far away, because his emotions are running into overdrive and his head is spinning.

But before he turns all of the way, he notices something: Nymphadora's hair has begun to fade to brown.


	3. Part III

**Title: **If Tomorrow (Part III)**  
>Characters:<strong> Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks**  
>Genre:<strong> Romance, Angst, Introspection**  
>Words:<strong> 1,321**  
>Notes:<strong> At the bottom.

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><p>The one time she needs her legs to buckle at the knees, needs to trip over her own feet, needs to somehow fall and give herself a life-threatening injury, nothing happens, she remains steady on her feet, and she is forced to watch him leave.<p>

She thinks she feels the colour fading from her skin as he disappears, the great sodding prat.

Coming back to tell her that he loves her, but that he won't let anything happen between them. _Well_.

She wonders how she is supposed to get over him now, now that he's up and left her, now that he's told her that he loves her, now that she _knows for certain_ that she hadn't imagined all of those glances he'd sent her way over the kitchen table at Grimmauld Place.

Her knees give a delayed response and buckle, now, and she drops unceremoniously to the stoop outside of her flat's front door.

Remus loves her.

_Remus_ loves _her._

_Loves_.

She wants to smile, because she's wanted to hear those words from him for a long time, hoped he'd say them first so that she wouldn't have to work up the courage to be the first one to say it, but her smile is empty and her eyes are full—of tears.

Well, it's okay to cry, just this once, because nobody is here to see it, and Remus did kiss her, and it was nice while it lasted, and now that she's known what it was like, it's going to be impossible to forget, to think about what she might have had if only she'd gone about it differently.

Her mother always said her impulsiveness would be her downfall, but she hardly feels like showing up at her mum and dad's house so that her mum can say, _"I told you so,"_ and her dad can laugh good-naturedly about it because he doesn't really know, doesn't understand.

She wonders what they'd say if they knew about Remus, if they found out what he is, and she wonders if maybe she's nothing but a great big coward herself because she's never told them about him, never told any of her friends, never told _anyone_ who wasn't in the Order.

And everyone in the Order already knew that Remus J. Lupin was a werewolf.

A part of her thinks that she'd happily walk down the street with Remus on her arm if she could, and she has, in the past, though she now realizes that she's never done it with both of them looking their natural, normal selves.

But she'd be proud of him, she thinks, proud of Remus, because he's such a good man, the perfect listener, because he's always been there to hear about her day when she needed someone to unload on, and it's only him she's ever wanted to tell about the slightly more personal things, because Remus will never laugh at her or tell her she is being ridiculous.

She has a pretty good income, and since entering into the training to become an Auror, she's lost touch with most of her friends—though she tries not to think about it, because it is almost entirely her fault, she's always so busy, so very busy, she doesn't have time, or maybe it's that she doesn't make time. Really, all that she's ever wanted in a man is someone who complements her personality, who is calm and rational to counter her impulsiveness, who listens when she talks but isn't afraid to tell her when she is being tactless.

She doesn't need money, or more friends, or someone she can show off. She just wants someone who is going to be there for her, and now—

Now that someone is _not _Remus, because he can't.

He can't be that person for her, the one she wants.

The tears have stopped, and she wipes her face on the sleeve of her shirt, but the sorrow continues to press in around her; it's as if she is facing one of the dementors of Azkaban.

She still wants him to be that person for her.

If he comes back—no, _when_, because he will come back, because he _is not_ dying out there with Greyback's pack, he can't, she won't allow it, she'll rush in there and keep it from happening, somehow, if it all boils down to that—she will try again. She's not a quitter, she's never been a quitter, but she thinks maybe this is a bit like a necessary time out in Quidditch; maybe if she can manage to regroup and come up with a new strategy, the game will be salvageable.

She can still win.

_They_ can still win, because she knows now that he loves her, and someone in love always wants to be with the person they love, even if they're afraid of the consequences. He wants it as much as she does.

It will be a long time in coming. She realizes this as she walks back inside her flat and closes the door behind her. Passing the mirror in the entryway, she tucks her mousy-brown hair behind her ears, and sighs.

"I might be stuck with you for a while," she tells it, a little sadly, because she knows it will take months and months to get Remus alone again, to get him in a fitting mood, to make certain that things are exactly as they should be…and even then, there is no guarantee that he won't flee again, that he won't run away.

And she knows she can't kiss him, or corner him, because that will only make things worse. It has to be on his time, he has to be comfortable with it, or it will only hurt them both more. One wrong move and it will all be over for _them_.

She sits on the couch in her quiet flat and stares at the ceiling for a long moment. With her work in the Order, and the daily grind she puts herself through with her job as an Auror, she could very likely die any day; she nearly died at the Ministry, in the Department of Mysteries. (She still remembers the pain when she woke up before they'd managed to get her to St. Mungo's.)

She had worried, then, that she would die before she could tell him, and she had tried to tell him right then, when she didn't have a clue as to where she was, exactly, when tears were spilling from her eyes from the pain alone, but her lips wouldn't move, her voice wouldn't work, and all she could think was, _I'm going to die before I can tell him_.

And that had hurt nearly as much as her physical injuries.

Unfortunately, the moment she had chosen to say it had been only marginally better than when he had been trying to take her to St. Mungo's for help after the battle in the Ministry. She had allowed time to pass, but still, he had not been ready to hear it, and she'd given in to impulsiveness to spit it out after a routine stakeout as he saw her home.

But at least she's had the chance to tell him.

Despite the sadness that she feels because he refuses to act on his reciprocated feelings, she's glad that she knows that _he_ _loves_ _her_, because as much as she wants to say it's impossible that he won't return, there is always the chance that he won't, that he won't be able to make it back, that he'll die out there, that tomorrow will not come.

So if tomorrow never comes, because of death or the threat of ending up with the Longbottoms and Gilderoy Lockhart as permanent residents of St. Mungo's, at least there will be no doubt that what both of them feel is love for the other.

And that's enough for now.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> It's not a long 'fic, but it says what I meant it to. Tonks is not a quitter, but it's always good for a non-quitter to notice, realize, and respect that there are boundaries. Some boundaries can be pushed, or broken, while others just can't. People have erected them with good reason, and they don't want them to come crashing down without ample warning.

In this story, Tonks realizes what Remus's boundaries are, understands she's pushed too soon (alternatively, at a bad time) and that if she pushes again before he's ready, she'll likely only ruin the tentative friendship they still have (because a friendship once confessed to be more from one person to another is never the same again).

So it hurts, to have to wait for him to make up his damn mind, it hurts because she knows he does love her (he's just not ready to face the consequences of that), and there are some communication issues that need to be worked out, because she understands his issues and concerns far better than he realizes she does, but it also wouldn't hurt for him to say more of what he's thinking to help her see his side of things.

But this story does end on a happyish note, because they do know how the other feels—it's always good to know that you're loved by someone else!—and there is hope that in the future, Tonks will find the _right_ moment to Remus, the right moment to talk things over, the right moment to start a relationship.

Thank you for reading—I appreciate the kind feedback I've received, and I hope this last chapter wrapped things up well enough, even if it wasn't the happy fanservice ending some were hoping for.


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